A Mercenary's Job
by wh40kwriter
Summary: Simple, direct and precise. That was the way the job was supposed to go down. But certain things are not always as simple as they might seem...
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This is my first fic. Please consider typos wrong grammar etc. because English is not my national language. The mercenaries are not, however official cannon, they are my own invention (though you may note the Inquisition uses bounty hunters and such from time to time). 

**It was early in the afternoon **at White Square in the rebel backwater planet of Krud II, in the northern edge of Ultima Segmentum.

Mercenary Corporal 1st Class Michael Istevus sat crouched 2 blocks away inside a dim room on 6th floor of a condemned hab building. He was slumped against a cracked rockcrete wall; his head of dry, messy hair exposed as he gazed into the magnoculars with his purple eyes. He adjusted the strap on his loose Carapace armor and turned the wheel in the middle of the magnoculars to adjust their clarity. He could see that the local government had set up a stage for an address to be given by their heretic leader.

Their mission was simple, delicately planned and quite short: Assassinate the planet's leader and escape before authorities realized that they've been caught with their pants down and their shit hanging out.

Even so, Mike couldn't shake the feeling of unease gripping his bowels.

Beside him his close friend and squad mate Joe, was crouched, with Long-las cradled in his arms and clad in the same black Carapace armor and urban camo fatigues. The Blond headed sniper grunted as he checked the sniper rifle's power cell.

Mike squirmed in his dull Carapace armor and donned his helmet as he pressed the magnoculars to his face for the umpteenth time and sighed. The Emperor damned, heretic "president" (or so the locals called their Governor) hadn't arrived yet after their two hours of waiting inside this humid death trap.

The masses started... well, massing in wait for their leader's glorious, But-I-Don't-Want-To-Be-Part-Of-The-Imperium speech.

Mike touched the scythe on wings emblem on the center torso of his armor. It had been almost thirteen years since he joined the Mercs at the tender age of seven. With them, he had trained endlessly until he was ready to for his first mission, he had been 16 then, fresh from training and wet behind the ears but, as Mike was proud to say, the youngest Merc in their company.

He and his company had been called to action here by the Administratum with the sweet promise of a million thrones to get the job done.

Now, in case you're wondering why they bothered hiring and paying Mercenaries instead of getting the Officio Assasinorum to do the job for free is because:

1) this was a small time tyrant, not Abaddon the Despoiler

2) In a backwater like this, who had time to requisition a Temple Assassin?

3) Assassins are creepy

"Any visual on the target?" queried a brown haired Tychus, the veteran leader of their little hit squad.

"Negative Ty" Mike reported back.

Tychus cussed as he heard his reply. Tychus and another 2 other members, Gray & Shiny were waiting in a plain white van idling in a convenient back alley at the rear of the building.

"Vox check" interrupted a familiar static ridden voice.

"For the last Warp damned time, the vox is fine Dave!" replied Tychus.

Dave was the Mercenaries Comms Operator. While Mike & his squad worked their asses of planet side, the skinny redhead sat comfortably in their Lunar class Cruiser: _Shit Happens in orbit _.

The Cruiser was cleverly disguised and was docked incognito as an Innocent Rouge Trader vessel.

"Aren't we supposed to be worried?" Mike butted in.

"About what? Oh, _them _monitoring the vox? Its fine, the channel is quite secure and these sloppy bastards can't tap our frequency" drawled the Comms Operator.

"TARGET ENTERING THE AREA!" Mike nearly shouted.

Joe immediately sighted through the window, Tychus and Dave shut up and Mike rammed the magnoculars to his face, leaving rings around his eyes.

True enough, a long motorcade with a black limo in the center, made its way towards the square. Military personnel armed with Lasguns and wearing Flak Armor parted the crowd of adoring supporters for the limo to pass.

Moments later, when the limo reached the stage set up in the middle of the square, the passenger doors opened and 2 men in black suites stepped out. Both had sun glasses and combeads in one of their ears.

One of them reached inside the limo and helped a middle-aged man out. The man was also wearing a black suite, but with no glasses. He had graying hair and, as Mike noticed, a killer smile.

**Joseph Lern** aimed down the Long-las' telescopic sight. He trained them on the smiling president and tracked him with his rifle's crosshairs.

The man made his way on stage, flanked by his two burly bodyguards. He reached the podium and waved his bodyguards of, bad idea. Joe was holding his breath for the shot when-

"Joe!" Mike hissed at the sniper.

"What?" Joe hissed back irritably.

"You're scopes' creating glare! We'll be noticed!' Mike said.

True enough, Joe's scope was indeed reflecting the 2 o'clock sun.

"I have him where I want him, we can't switch position now, I'll lose the shot!" he whined.

"And _we_ might lose our lives!" Mike retorted.

"Well, we might lose the _mission_!" Joe countered.

Mike understood. He knew to fail was to disappoint the one who took him in...

Too late... noticing the glare, one of the body guards heads snapped up at their direction.

Joe fired.

**President Nickson walked up on stage, **not knowing that, in a few moments his brain & vital fluids were about to be scattered all over the stage.

The population thought he was tired of the Emperor's rule and he knew the citizens were as well. They had faced heavy taxing from the Administratum in recent years had starved the people and turned them bitter towards the Imperium.

Only half of what they were sending to the Imperium actually got through. Human pirates and aliens pillaged their convoys on a regular basis.

Nickson claimed that all he wanted was the welfare of the population. But what Nickson really wanted was power, power and riches.

Thunderous applause greeted his way to the podium; he smiled that killer smile & waved at the cheering throng of people. Unbeknownst to the population, he had plans; quite ambitious plans in fact, plans that would see the Imperium under a new rule, _his_ rule.

He was already on the podium, when he noticed something odd; something annoyingly bright was nagging the corner of his left eye. He decided to risk a quick glance... at his doom; a high-powered shot of pure energy speared his head.

The people nearest him were showered with cranial fluid.

The square erupted into a scene of panic.

**Mike** peered mouth agape at the panic before him, he had watched the president's head decorate the stage before discipline reasserted itself. He shoved the magnoculars back into their casing and drew his twin bolt pistols.

Joe shouldered his las and they bolted out of the room and down the old cracking rockcrete stairs. Even here, the sound of the screaming, panicking crowd could be heard.

Mike and Joe dashed down the stairs with trained efficiency. They burst out of the main door, literally ripping the poor slab of wood of its rusted hinges. They took a sharp turn into the alley to their left and burst into the rear double doors of the waiting van.

"What took you so long? I thought I trained you better." Tychus chuckled.

"Fuckup and drive, we've been compromised!" Mike yelled

Chuckling, Tychus slammed his foot down on the pedal.

**Darian Heston was running**, he heard the shouting and screaming and he knew what it meant, he was young, lean, dark-haired corporate employee on his regular lunch break, headed to a nice cozy burger place only a couple blocks away when the screaming started. Still clad in suit and tie he didn't know what was happening but he had only one thought in his head at the moment: run the fuck away.

He heard the screaming of engines behind him and hazarded a once over. What he saw only made him run faster. There was a plain white van behind him full of armed men; he saw the silhouette of a Lasgun in one of their arms, Terrorists!

He pumped his legs faster. The van was on his tail now

In a last ditch effort that surely would have failed if the van was aiming to run him over, he jumped into a heap of garbage on the left side of the road.

The van sped by, leaving an astonished trash-covered Darian staring mouth agape, at its rapidly speeding rear where it read: How's my driving?

**The back of the van** was dim, cramped and stuffy to add insult to injury Tychus' driving was making it a less than luxurious ride.

That as when he heard it, the law enforcement sirens.

Crack!

Crack!

Crack! A rain of badly aimed laspistol fire strafed by them.

Shiny the heavy weapons man smiled. His black hair shaved into a crew cut. He moved towards the window in one of the rear doors and smashed it with the stock of his bulky, drum fed custom stubber. He sighted for but a moment and fired.

"!" The roar of Shiny's weapon was deafening inside such a confined place.

Instantly one of the local squad cars was shredded by .50 Caliber Incendiary slugs, its hull a shorn metallic wreck, resembling the ancient, Terran "Swiss Cheese".

Mike's vox suddenly crackled to life.

"Mike?" intruded Dave's Voice.

"Yeah?" responded Mike.

"Yeah, uh, we got a problem." said the Comms Operator.

"Exactly how big is this problem?" Mike was getting that sinking feeling.

"Very big." Dave responded.

So what do you think? Win, Fail or Epic Fail? Chapter 2 will be posted soon if most reviews are favorable. Thanks For Reading. 


	2. Chapter 2: Car Chase!

A/N: Sorry this chapter was kinda short but its all I can do for now. Though some events in this chapter may seem impossible, don't forget that the Mercs are an elite army for hire. Constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated.

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**Tychus Vasili **sat in the driver's seat, trying to coax the plain white van to even higher speeds.

They were racing through a street somewhere south of the city, dodging ground cars, cargo haulers & anything in between. He was desperately trying to find the road the GPS told him led to the starport. There, they would board an escape shuttle waiting for them and if they didn't make it in time, the shuttle would leave without them. Worse still, they were being pursued by half a dozen squad cars, give or take a few.

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Gray, the jet black haired Ex-Mechanicus sat beside him, riding shotgun, while firing his Hellgun indiscriminately at pursuing enforcement vehicles.

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He had narrowly missed a passing a family sedan, when Mike's voice interrupted from the rear.

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"Umm, Sarge?"

"Yeah?" he replied, while ramming a pursuing squad car to the side of the road.

"We gotta head for the military compound." Mike said.

"And why is that?" Tychus yelled over the noise of a squad car's hull being dragged across rockcrete walls by a very angry plain white van.

.

Mike told him.

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"WE HAVE TO WHAT?" shouted Tychus

"Dave told me sarge. We gotta kill the thing before the Warp Storm gets called in." Mike said sullenly.

.

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**Gray fired** his Hellgun at the pursuing squad cars from the front seat. He cursed when las bolts peppered the area his head formerly occupied moments ago. He ducked back inside the drivers cabin of the plain white van (though most parts of the hull were too battle scarred to be called "white").

There were about 7 squad cars chasing them.

Gray lined up his shot and fired.

He may not have been brought up to be a soldier like the rest of his squad but he knew his physics and guns well, his aim was true. His shot impacted against the tire of one of the pursuers. The high-powered hellgun las bolt burned right into the car's tire. The tire exploded causing the vehicle to spin violently out of control, slamming against another squad car and condemning the two cars into a high-velocity impact with a brick wall, Gray allowed himself a small smile.

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He cursed yet again when 4 more squad cars joined the chase from an intersection behind them.

Thankfully most of the training form his Mechanicus years still remained memorable in his noggin. Though he had loved creating things, inventing new stuff and detonating ridiculous amounts of explosives, he never really felt... happy with his Schoolmates on Mars. His instructors always said he had great potential and all that, but to him there was more to life than getting regular augmentations, praying to any thing with three or more mechanical parts or speaking to one another with the use of two numbers. So one night Gray sneaked into a Rouge Trader vessel via bribery and was gone from Mars, forever.

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He snapped himself out of his reminiscing, into real time and flipped up the built in stereo, revealing a selection of knobs, buttons, switches and dials.

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"W-Wait, are those-?" Tychus stuttered, momentarily distracted by the sudden gesture.

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Gray smiled deviously, he pressed a red button on the panel.

.

Instantly, a Hunter-killer missile fired from somewhere behind and below the rear bumper, its high-tech guidance systems locating the closest and most vulnerable target. It had found its prey.

The missile slammed into a speeding squad car. The car exploded propelling it fifteen feet into the air.

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The boys at the back cheered, Tychus laughed and high-fived him. That was when Gray remembered why he had joined the Mercs in the first place. He had joined it for the fun, exhilaration, explosions, viscera but most of all, he left to have people he could truly call, "friends".

.

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**This was preposterous!** Tychus just couldn't believe it! They had to break in a heavily fortified military compound and stop a psyker from calling in a Warp Storm? The more and more Tychus thought about it the more suicidal it was beginning to look.

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Suddenly, Tychus heard it, the unmistakable buzz of circling Helicopters. Though Helicopters had been replaced with Ornithopters in most worlds, they were still quite deadly when strafing the enemy with stubber or bolter fire. And today, _they_ were the enemy.

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His heart sank when he saw one of the 'copters was blocking the middle of the bridge straight ahead. That bridge was quickest way to the compound. If they didn't cross that bridge, it would take almost an hour of heart-stopping car chase to get there.

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Though Tychus new it was risky, he really didn't care, it was either do or die.

Tychus floored it. The battered van screamed ahead, right into the 'copter gunner's crosshairs.

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**Mike fired **over the edge of the window, his bolt pistols roaring a litany of destruction.

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Shiny fired as well, this time on full-auto, screaming like a Flash git with a Punisher gun. The torrent of stubber bullets hammered through one of the squad cars, tearing a chunk of roof, door _and_ driver asunder. The car, being relieved of its driver, crashed bumper-first into a stoplight.

Suddenly a strafing 'copter sprayed the van with its deadly slugs, tearing right through the van's flimsy roof; Mike was hit twice in the chest where his heart and right lung were. Though the Carapace armor took all of it with out faltering, and even though Mike had experienced far worse, it still hurt like a bitch on obscura.

Joe poked his head out of the broken window, sighted carefully for a moment and fired into the exposed underbelly of the 'copter. The shot impaled the pilot from rectum to cranium. The vehicle, now being pilot less swayed drunkenly to its left and despite the copilot's desperate attempts and screams, plummeted side first into the street where it bounced violently forward with a tortured shriek of Plasteel for another ten meters before exploding into a couple of unfortunate squad cars.

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Mike wolf whistled.

Joe grinned, triple kill.

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Their moment of relief didn't last long though. Mike felt the van accelerate, going at an even more hazardous speed then it was already at, heading straight for a hovering 'copter.

And to make matters worse, both ends of the bridge began lifting at the midsection to admit a passing boat.

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"ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FRAKKING MIND?" screamed Mike and Joe in unison.

"No", Tychus replied casually, "just a lil' bit crazy"

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Before anyone could grab the wheel from a maniacally laughing Tychus, they were over the lip of the rising section of bridge. Underneath them was nothing but a blue expanse of water for another 20 feet, give or take a few.

Time slowed itself, the van was still going forward, propelled by the momentum of its jump. Its wheels were still spinning, running, but without any ground to run on. The 'copter was waiting; the van was heading right into a direct collision course with it.

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And in one of the most Badass moments of his life, Mike threw open the sun roof, aimed his trusty bolt pistols horizontally at the exposed fuel tank on the side of the 'copter, and fired them, one after the other**... in mid air**.

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The rounds ripped through the metal storage tank, armed themselves, and detonated almost five hundred kilograms of promethium.

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The van emerged through the fireball... unscathed.

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A/N: Thanks for reading! Once again, constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated!


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